Backup life plan: Egypt tour guide

From the Old Wonders of the World in Egypt to the new Wonders of Dubai and from there to the wonderful and surprising interactions I got to have in Syria and Lebanon, the past four weeks were just about everything I could have asked for, and there is really more to tell then I will ever be able to realistically write down (especially given my penchant for long-windedness...). That being said, I'll try and hit some of the highlights in the next couple of posts.

Starting the moment I picked up Eleanor and Dylan from the airport I had a great time leading them around Egypt. I'd been looking forward to sharing all the things I've learned and picked up on here for a long time, so I was pretty excited to play the tour guide. Plus, during our time in Egypt for the most part I had a number of pretty gratifying Arabic experiences as the translator for Ellie and Dylan. I found on more than one occasion that I was able to converse (as in an actual conversations(!)) in Arabic at least in some very basic ways and fairly regularly even with enough skill to crack a few good Egyptian jokes which had me feeling pretty good. What's more I even managed to hold my own well enough in a few good arguments (usually having to do with bargaining for some prices, of course). At the same time, Dylan and Eleanor had no idea how much I didn't understand of what Egyptians would say to me, but as I'm sure most language learners know, you kind of learn to fake it well enough to believably limp through most conversations that you don't feel like working all the way through.

So anyway, on our first day of the Egypt tour we went to Giza--the place I had been avoiding going to specifically because I knew I would be going with Eleanor and Dylan for sure anyway. I kind of suck at touring ruins, as I've mentioned, but the size of the Pyramids is pretty hard to argue with:

Dylan and Ellie in front of the second biggest pyramid, but the only one that managed to keep some of its limestone siding from thrifty Egyptian rulers who used the limestone on the monuments for other building projects.

And of course, the Sphinx:


In Arabic, the Sphinx is called "Abu Hol," or Father of Terror

After Giza, I took them downtown to get some juice and other classic Egyptian foods. We also went to Khan el-Khalili around midnight which to my shock and disturbance was actually completely barren--something I thought never actually happened.


The next day I took Eleanor and Dylan to the Citadel to see the fantastic Mohammad Ali mosque and the stunning view of Cairo from the fortress' elevated location. I then also convinced them to walk with me somewhere I had not yet been in Cairo, but had been meaning to go to for a long time: the Garbage City. I knew from the maps in our trusty Lonely Planet guide book that the city and the famous church of St. Simon the Tanner tucked away in the cliffs surrounding the city were fairly close to the Citadel and so I convinced them that it would be a cool idea to walk there. This involved asking multiple Egyptians for directions (you can't just ask one as we know) and then walking first along a highway and then through the, um, not clean streets of the garbage city. In between the highway and the garbage city though we had the good fortune to walk past some pre-teen Egyptian boys playing soccer on a park/patch of grass between some streets. Eleanor patiently let Dylan and I indulge in some pick up soccer with the boys--possibly one of my favorite memories of being in Egypt of all time, I think.



After our impromptu game (during which Dylan, as usual, played better than me) we made our way into the garbage city which was also a very cool experience. Now the area, a portion of Cairo that is partially tucked away into a cliff, is officially part of an area called Manshiyet Nasr, but the garbage city is really its own distinct area. For centuries, this region of the city has been home to the "Zabaleen," or "Garbage People," who have taken care of the city's garbage, and who have also historically almost always Coptic Christians for reasons I don't fully know. Even to this day, you will see them late at night picking up the bags of garbage distributed on certain street corners around Cairo and loading them up into trucks. Despite having seen that countless times, I had not realized that they indeed literally just took it back to their area of Cairo, but judging from the number of trucks loaded to the brim with garbage bags driving past Dylan, Eleanor and I, it seems that is exactly what they do. I think they burn quite a lot of the garbage, but nowhere near all of it, as piles of garbage were everywhere to be found in the city, though not just piled up any old place as you might expect. Instead, they had either piled it all in certain locations, or had actually taken it into what seemed like their own houses. After walking past what seemed like more or less a giant pile of trash near the entrance to the city's main road, we passed what appeared to be abandoned store fronts filled with trash. At one point we passed one that was particularly full that actually had an Egyptian man sitting in a little dug-out amidst the trash in his store/home(?). I didn't get too many pictures here, because I felt a little intrusive doing so, but I did like the way the clothes were all hanging from everyone's windows:


The state of the city sounds sort of shocking, and while thinking about it afterwards it made me sort of sad, but at the time I was mostly taking cues from the residents I walked past, none of whom seemed particularly bothered by the state of their city. Also remarkable was that we were basically not harassed at all, even with blonde, blue-eyed Eleanor. This sort of made sense given that there is a direct relationship between how used Egyptians are to seeing tourists and how much they will harass said tourists (sort of contradictory-seeming when you think about it at first, I know). After asking a few of the nice residents we took a right turn and a slight hike up a curvy road to find the rather impressive Church of St. Simon carved into the white stone cliffs.

St. Simon was canonized as a Saint for successfully praying to God to move the mountain (as some part of the gospel of Matthew says: If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to the mountain, Move from here to there, and it will move, nothing will be impossible for you) and in the process saving all the Copts. For some reason though, he didn't get himself a fancy church until the 1990's despite being an important saint for Coptic Christians in Egypt for almost a millennium. Anyway, his church had lots of cool reliefs chiseled into the walls and though we couldn't see it, also had a multi-thousand person outdoor auditorium for big services that we were not allowed to see unfortunately. It was clean and quiet and really rather beautiful, but it also felt a little like an abandoned Christian amusement park as there were very few people there.


The next day we got up at around three in the morning to take the short flight down to Luxor (the train ride which I had recently done to Aswan could have been cool for Eleanor and Dylan, but we didn't have the time). We landed in Luxor around 6:30 in the morning to see this dream-like sight (or was it just dream-like because I was half asleep?):



And then this cheerful sign:

More on Luxor soon. Lots of crazy temples and stuff. And someone called Mr. Dude.